Hoolboom was born in
Toronto,
Ontario, to a Dutch father and
Dutch-Indonesian mother on 1 January 1959. He took up filmmaking at an early age, using the family's
Super 8 camera, and did his high school education in
Burlington, Ontario. In 1980 Hoolboom enrolled at
Sheridan College in
Oakville, Ontario. During his three years there he became known for his works which, according to Canadian film critic
Geoff Pevere, "demonstrated a consuming interest in navigating the outer limits of perception, of language, of self, of mechanical reproduction, of bodily sensation and experience". He found wide accolade in 1986 with the release of a "film that's not quite a film",
White Museum, a 32-minute work which spliced audio clips of pop culture media and commentary on the state of film over a clear
leader. Many of his films during the late 1980s, such as
From Home (1988) and
Eat (1989), dealt with various aspects of the body. Hoolboom, while serving a two-year stint at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, was diagnosed with
HIV in 1989, after going to donate blood. In the six years following his diagnosis he made a further 27 films, with his focus changing to the impermanence of existence, sexuality, and HIV/
AIDS. This period has been noted as having a "new urgency". He also ran a magazine on fringe films,
The Independent Eye. In the mid-1990s Hoolboom won Best Canadian Short Film at the
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) twice, first with 1993's ''
Frank's Cock. The eight-minute film dealt with an unnamed man, portrayed by Callum Keith Rennie, who considered himself the "Michael Jordan of sex", losing his lover Frank to AIDS. The story was conveyed with a monologue occupying a quadrant of a four-part split-screen, with other quadrants including popular art, gay pornography, and representations of human creation. When accepting the award at TIFF, Hoolboom quipped "Frank's Cock
has never seemed so large". That year also saw the creation of two further works: Valentine's Day
, which followed a man who splurged on making a film after being diagnosed with AIDS; and Kanada'', in which
Wayne Gretzky serves as prime minister and uses broadcast rights for a civil war to pay off the Canada's debt. Robert Everett-Green of
The Globe and Mail wrote that ''Valentine's Day
was reminiscent of the works of Marquis de Sade and the 1973 French/Italian film La Grande Bouffe''. Three years later, in 1996, Hoolboom released
Letters From Home, based in part on a speech by
LGBT rights activist
Vito Russo. The 15-minute film features commentary on popular misconceptions of AIDS and ways that the general public deal with AIDS patients before ending on an optimistic note, expressing hope that the AIDS crisis would one day be over. In 1998 he released the feature-length film
Panic Bodies, a six-part work dealing with aspects of the body which, according to Hoolboom, is fragmented like AIDS fragments the body. That year he also released
Plague Years: A Life in Underground Movies, a book which blends aspects of film scripts and
autobiographical writing. A four-minute film tribute to Hoolboom by Wrik Mead, entitled
Hoolboom, was sponsored by Arts Toronto and debuted in 1999. The following year Hoolboom released
Inside the Pleasure Dome: Fringe Film in Canada, a series of 23 interviews with Canadian fringe filmmakers regarding the industry, with a foreword by
Atom Egoyan. ==Later film work==